Pete had his go two days back, now it is Durwood’s turn, in today’s strip, to patronize Mindy, the woman who DARED to know things about comic book writing and artwork.

Whoa, hold up there Darin! You have your own woman to patronize, so back off of Pete’s! Yeah, she’s 3 time zones away right now, but that is what phones are for.

Maybe tomorrow Mindy will lecture Pete and Durwood on locking their computers while away from them so that visitors don’t use their hard work (I did not type this with a straight face…) as their own personal coloring book. We have established that she is allowed to know stuff, after all.

Sigh. Well, if she can draw too, no one has any use for Boy Lisa at all anymore, so maybe there’s an upside to look forward to,,,someday. Yeah, I know it’s a reach but WTF, a little hope beats the usual total dearth of it.

Remember she’s just a colorist who happens to know things. Pete does the words and What’s-his-face does the drawing. You know, the hard stuff.*

* To be fair, that stuff is hard (even for boys). Leave aside Batty’s shitty writing and take in today’s artwork. What’s-her-face ages from early 20’s in panel one to a rather hardened early 50’s by panel three.

So, to recap: Mindy had time to look around, find Dullard’s artwork, scan it into the computer, color it, and print it out. That tells me she was probably waiting for upwards of an hour for Pete to acknowledge her presence at all. Oh yeah, this is a healthy relationship.

My opinion of Mindy was already pretty low, since she inexplicably seemed to find Pete attractive–something no self-respecting human would do. My opinion of all these characters keeps finding new levels to descend.

Please… Mindy is clearly only fucking around with Pete because overnight he became the hottest writer in Hollywood after SJ became the highest grossing movie of the past/present/future…

None of the female characters come off well in the strip, with Cindy-Sommers-Winkerbean-Jarre being the #1 offender… She literally needed to seduce, stalk, and then get her marriage hooks into a dimwitted shallow Hollywood actor just to boost her self esteem about her beauty even though she’s fifty-eight fucking years old and still looks like a younger Kate Upton…

1. “HOW DARE YOU SHOW US MENFOLK UP BY WALTZING IN HERE AND DOING 90 SECONDS OF ACTUAL WORK!! IF WE WERE IN SAUDI ARABIA YOU’D BE LOSING YOUR HEAD FOR THIS!”

2. We’re about to get a sepia-toned “broads in the workplace” flashback to 1959 Batom Comics, aren’t we??

3. And therein lies the hypocrisy… Funkyverse women by law are required to know about comics, they must smirk at every lameassed comics-related pun, they must know why comics rock, and why they are more important in daily Funkyverse life than the Holy Bible, they’re expected to indulge and encourage every comics-related whim of the men in their lives (Want to go to Comicon with exclusive VIP access or take a two-week cross-dimensional vacation to the Flash Museum with your butt buddy? Fine…) while they must stay at home neglected and alone…. But they aren’t ever allowed to have any kind of independent, genuine opinion or interest in comics themselves…

4. It’s official — Thanks to Thomas Batiuk, I’m going to be hating comic books and everything associated with them for the rest of my natural life… How on Earth is someone this obsessed with comics so inept at making half-interesting or god forbid funny storylines about everyday people obsessed with comics?

Newest example of Batiuk’s appalling inability to move past his initial idea onto something more plausible. He wants Mindy to join up with this team as a colorist, so he has her blunder into the office for no apparent reason whatsoever – after all, she still hasn’t said why she came to visit Mopey at the office. And then he has Darin leave an uncolored draft drawing lying around, which Mindy inexplicably decides to color. This is, of course, Batiuk’s best way of having Mopey and Darin recognize Mindy’s genius as a colorist. She can’t possibly tell them or anything. No, better to have every single person in this comic be an idiot. It’s worked so well in the past, after all.